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Steve Jobs' Death Beats Out News of Beyonce's Unborn Child For Most Tweets Per Second Record

Steve Jobs Quickly Throws Together a $100 Gift Certificate for iPhone Customers
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News of Steve Jobs' death spread through Twitter faster than any other event in the (admittedly brief) history of the social media site, eclipsing the recent record held by news that Beyonce is preggo.

The social media monitoring firm SR7 expects official Twitter figures will show that in the hours after Steve Jobs' death was announced, his fans and admirers sent out 10,000 tweets per second, according to the Australian paper The Age. Keywords in tweets range from sadness (#iSad) to praises for both the man and his innovations (#ThankYouSteve). But you know this, if you went on the internet this week.

By comparison, Beyonce's performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, where it was revealed that she was pregnant, generated a record 8868 tweets per second, according to SR7.

This may say as much about Twitter as it does about Jobs. It's grown a ton. Way back in 2009 when Michael Jackson died, there were 493 tweets sent out per second, which was enough to bring up the fail whale screen.

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